A Problem for the Pentagon

Published December 20, 2010 9:58pm ET



For decades, one of the Pentagon’s fundamental strategic doctrines has been sustaining a military that could successfully prosecute two wars simultaneously. But after the last Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon force shaping study, Defense department planners largely backed off the combat catechisms of old. The new doctrine, said defense strategists, would be that the military could fight a counterinsurgency while deterring “peer or near-peer competition,” namely Russia and China.

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